Transistor aging can be a major showstopper in FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor) technologies which generally suffer from enhanced degradation of transistors compared to planar technologies. Circuits are generally affected by aging in two ways: (1) continuous decline of the circuit performance over it's lifetime; and (2) an irreversible dielectric breakdown of transistors, leading to an instantaneous failure of the corresponding circuit.
Due to the exponential voltage dependence of aging, aging mainly affects circuits where transistors are exposed to over-voltages. One class of circuits where over-voltages commonly appear are high voltage circuits using stacked low voltage devices. Examples of high voltage circuits are high-voltage I/O cells, power amplifiers, or DC-DC converters, etc.